For those of you who don’t know, there’s a new social news site for WordPress, called WPVote. I’ve been using the site for a couple of days and while the concept is great, the quality of entries are poor at this early stage.

I’m a big believer in the idea of a social news site for WordPress. It’s a great way of pooling together all of the WordPress related posts out there, making it easy for people to find quality information about WordPress.

The Published News section should be the most valuable list of WordPress related articles around. Unfortunately however, to be quite frank, there’s a lot of crap in the Published News section at the moment.

There are the obligitory Top WordPress Plugins Lists that don’t add anything new (and seem to miss many of the essential plugins to boot), generic How To Blog posts with only a tenuous link to WordPress, and posts that don’t really help. For example, one post includes the point:

If you have added a new feature to your WP blog by writing some PHP code that executes SQL queries; make sure that you minimize the load on the server.

If you know what that means, you probably don’t need to be told. If you don’t know what that means, this doesn’t help you at all! If it had a link to a site that told you how to minimise the load on the server, then it would add value. Without such a link, it’s useless.

I won’t link to these entries here, as I’m not having a go at individuals and don’t want to single anyone out, but posts such as this don’t belong in the Published News section.

Now, I’m not saying that these articles are all bad (or that mine are better), or that there aren’t top quality posts there as well (see Perishable Press’ excellent and original article on .htaccess rules for permalinks), or that this doesn’t happen on other social news sites.

I’m not even saying that the poor quality entries shouldn’t be on WPVote. Of course they’re entitled to be! I just want to see better quality in the Published News section. How do we get that?

We all need to get behind WPVote. Submit quality WordPress articles when you find them. Vote on entries in the Upcoming News section. Add comments. Spread the word about WPVote, so the community grows.

I know this post sounds harsh, but it’s a call to action. I believe WPVote can be truly great – but the only way that will come to pass is if we all get behind it. Let’s make WPVote great!

Today is Australia Day, a national holiday celebrating our fine country, and an appropriate time for me to talk about a new community for Australian bloggers: Aussie Bloggers.

The brainchild of Meg from Dipping Into The Blogpond, Snoskred from Life In The Country and Andrew from On Blogging Australia, the site officially launched, on January 21, 2008. It’s purpose is to bring together Australian Bloggers into one community.

Read more about why this image was chosen for Aussie Bloggers

Aussie Bloggers is a group blog, featuring a core group of writers, along with guest posts from many others. It offers Australian bloggers the opportunity to showcase their work and to reach a much larger audience than they might on their individual blogs.

As well as the blog, Aussie Bloggers includes a forum with a range of topics. The forum was soft-launched on December 30, 2007 and already includes more than 200 active members. It is a lively, friendly, helpful place – and a big drain on my time.

The site, particularly the forum, serve as focal point for Australian bloggers. I’ve met many great bloggers there, that I wouldn’t have otherwise. There is the BUMPzee community, but it lacks the easy interactivity the forum offers.

So, what does Darren Rowse, ProBlogger, have to do with all of this? Well Darren is arguably Australia’s most famous blogger. As well as popping up in the forum from time to time, an interview with Darren was posted on the blog for Australia Day. Even if you’re not Australian, it’s worth a read!

As for my part, I’ll be contributing to the Aussie Bloggers blog from time and I’m also a moderator in the forum. I’m really enjoying it so far and I’m very happy to be part of something special.

Although Aussie Bloggers is focused on Australian bloggers and blogging, everyone’s welcome! So, whether you’re Australian or not, come on over and check it out. I hope to see you there!

I’ve just been having a look at Spock, the people search engine. I found it very interesting, but before I get into my findings, it’s important to note what Spock is not - it is not another a social network. On their about page, they state:

Spock is not a social network. Don’t get us wrong, we love social networks. We just think that there are already plenty of great options out there for sharing among friends. Spock is a people search application – once you find who you are looking for, go ahead and click through to see where they are on the web.

Spock finds information about people from the internet, including from social networks such as MySpace and LinkedIn. The idea is you can then find all information about a person in a single place. It’s also possible for logged in users to add information directly.

To find people you can search by name or by tag (and there is an Advanced Search function too). When you find someone, you’ll get everything Spock knows about that person, including links to external sites, tags, related people and news.

Since I mostly write about issues related to WordPress, I thought I’d try it out by doing a search for Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress. His profile exists and I learnt a few things about what he’s interested in (wasabi!) from his tags. There are also links to his LinkedIn and Friendster profiles, so I can check him out there.

It also possible to add a widget to your site for people found on Spock. I’ve included Matt’s here as an example (most have photos, but not Matt’s):

The service is still in Beta and it needs to mature a little. For example, if I search the WordPress tag, I get 43 people, but Matt’s not one of them. It does list several people I know, such as Douglas Karr, Mark Jaquith, Avinash Kumar, Aaron Brazell, Mark Ghosh (in that order), but of course Matt should be in the list, at the top.

One of the great things about Spock is that if you find things like this, you can fix it up (if you are logged in). See the WordPress in Matt’s widget above? I added that! (don’t mention the capitalisation, I just add the existing tag to Matt). He’s still not showing in the results for WordPress yet, but I assume there’s a lag and he soon will be. The only issue I see is that I’m not sure how Spock can decide where to place Matt in the list.

One positive sign about Spock is that I’m listed on it. Seriously, I mean that! Let me explain: When I first heard of Spock a month or so ago, I wasn’t listed. There were 13 other Stephen Cronins but not me. Well, now I’m listed – it seems they picked me up from LinkedIn.

To me, this is a great sign that Spock is headed in the right direction. They are proactively building their database, not just relying on end users to fill in the gaps. If they can find and add me, maybe they’ve found you too. You better go check!

But although their proactiveness is a great sign, for Spock to be a truly valuable service it needs people to get behind it and improve the information they have. If this happens, it will be very useful. So go ahead and get involved!

(This is a sponsored post)

Many people have been complaining about slow loading social widgets. You know the ones! I’ve written a WordPress plugin which may help, but there are some issues related to it and I’d like some advice. I have some specific people in mind, so I’ll ping them below.

UP TO DATE INFORMATION ABOUT THE CURRENT STATUS OF THIS PLUGIN CAN BE FOUND AT THE IFRAMEWIDGETS PLUGIN HOME PAGE

What Does The Plugin Do?

The plugin creates IFrame widgets for WordPress. They are similar to Text Widgets, except output is created in an IFrame (in the sidebar). So, placing social widget code in an IFrame widget means it will appear in an IFrame.

The benefit of placing social widgets in an IFrame is that IFrames load in parallel to the rest of the page. If the social widget loads slowly or hangs, it won’t prevent the rest of the page from loading.

In addition to this, the plugin provides other features / benefits, including:

• Widgets remain hidden until they are completely loaded, then appear in whole. If they don’t load, they won’t take up any space on your sidebar.
• Up to 9 IFrame widgets can be enabled, but you don’t have to use them for all your social widgets, just the ones you are having issues with.
• Should work for any external widget, not just social widgets.
• Caters for the BUMPzee widget php code (other php code won’t work).

Want to see it in action? You can, right here on my site. The BUMPzee, MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog widgets are all running in IFrame Widgets. Sounds great right? But there are some problems / issues.

Issues With Social Widgets In An IFrame

The following are some problems / issues with this approach:

1. The main problem is that links in the IFrame open in the IFrame. I’ve added target="_blank" to the IFrames which seems to fix the problem for the MyBlogLog widget but not the BUMPzee and BlogCatalog ones. Something in their widgets is overriding the IFrame. I’m looking into whether I can do something via javascript’s onClick event handler. This is a deal breaker for the BUMPzee and BlogCatalog widgets.
2. Social widgets need to tell their website who has been to your site. If they do this through cookies, there should be no problem. I can now confirm that BUMPzee, MyBlogLog & BlogCatalog widgets all work fine.
3. The social sites may not like people running the widgets in IFrames. I hadn’t considered this until I read Lucia’s post about Blogrush being unhappy with their widget being placed in the footer.
4. IFrames are not great for either SEO or accessibility. This should not be an issue, as we are dealing with external widgets rather than content. It may even help preserve PageRank as the search bots may not follow the links. Can any experts out there confirm this? And how will this impact on point 3 above?

Feedback Please!

I’d like some feedback on the above issues from anyone willing to leave a comment. In particular, there are some experts I’d like to hear from. I’m shooting pretty high, but I’ll ping them and see if they respond:

First up is Scott Jangro, BUMPzee creator. Scott, if you read this I’d love some feedback from the BUMPzee’s perspective, especially on points 1 and 3.

Next is Andy Beard, who is an expert in… well pretty much all of this. Andy, I know you’ll probably say that themes need to be designed correctly (ie sidebars before content), but I’m very interested in your views.

Third is John Reese. John, I’d be grateful for your thoughts on point 3. Would you be concerned by the Blogrush widget being in an IFrame (if it was placed higher on the page, which is your main concern about it being in the footer)?

I’d also like to hear from the following people who have had widget issues:

• Lucia at Big Bucks Blogger
• RT at Untwisted Vortex
• Chris at Blog Op

and anyone else with an opinion on this!

The Final Word

I’d really like feedback on this. I’ll probably release the plugin regardless, as it’s already written and I think it will have some use. However whether I push the social widget angle depends on your feedback (and whether I can solve the links opening in the IFrame issue).

Return readers will notice some changes here at More Than Scratch The Surface. I normally don’t blog about changes, but in this case, there are so many that I thought it would be worthwhile. Here’s a rundown on them.

Modified Theme

My theme was just a customised version of the default WordPress Theme. It still is, but I’ve modified it further. One day I will design a Theme from scratch, but for now I’d rather spend my time writing plugins.

The main change is that I’ve widened it: it was optimised for 800×600 with one sidebar, it’s now optimised for 1024×768 with two sidebars. I’ve put both sidebars on the right, although I may change this. I’ve stayed with fixed width, because I prefer to know exactly how it will look.

I’ve been threatening to do this for a while. Actually it’s only been 6 weeks (seems longer) since I said I’d do this in the comments of Untwisted Vortex’s The Death of the 640×480 Resolution.

Menu Bar

I’ve removed the Pages section of my sidebar and added a menu bar instead. I suspect this will get crowded as I write more plugins, but for now I’m happy with it.

Contact Page

I now have a Contact page, which was one of the things picked up when my site was reviewed on Untwisted Vortex.

I am using a WordPress plugin to do this, but I won’t tell you which one yet. I tried out five different plugins in making the selection and I’m planning a series of reviews in the coming weeks. I don’t want to spoil the conclusion!

Articles Page

I’ve added the Articles plugin by Alex King and used it to create an Articles page, so my articles are not buried over time, as pointed out by Hari when he reviewed my site. I will supplement this with some extra article features in future (such as a Most Viewed Articles section in the sidebar).

One thing I noticed while setting this up is that I have gotten away from article style posts in recent times. I am going to work to get back to articles in future.

The Corn Factor

I removed my ‘blurb’ and changed my tagline (from A Journey In Web Development to Exploring Web Development). My blurb seemed good to me when I started out, but now it seems corny. To prove I still have the corn factor, I’ve added the infinite loop image to my header.

If I had a travel blog, I’d add a great photo to the header, but it’s not so easy to do when you are writing about web development! I’m sure something better will come later.

Social Widgets

The Bumpzee, MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog widgets have migrated from my sidebar to my footer. They were just taking too long to load. They aren’t any quicker in the footer, but at least they aren’t holding up the rest of the page.

DualFeeds Beta

I’ve also been running the beta version of DualFeeds 1.1, which includes a sidebar widget and the ability to show the RSS feed links after each post. You can see these in action on my site.

Actually, I’ve held up the release of DualFeeds 1.1 while I’ve been redesigning the site. People haven’t been clamouring for it and I want to have my site right before I start pushing the update.

FeedBurner

I started using FeedBurner for my feeds several weeks ago, as part of testing DualFeeds 1.1. I am not sure I’ll keep using it. It’s nice to get stats about the number of subscribers and there are other benefits, but although FeedBurner works well for the main feeds, it’s not so good with WordPress’ dynamic feeds (eg category feeds). I’ll discuss this further later on.

Also, it appears that FeedBurner feeds don’t work in China, meaning I can’t use my desktop reader to read my own feed! Makes testing interesting. The Subscribe To Email feature may sway me to stick with them.

Antisocial Plugin

I’ve adopted Andy Beard’s Antisocial hack of the Sociable plugin, which adds social bookmarking links to end of each post. Antisocial makes the links nofollow, so you don’t leak too much PageRank. I’m not sure if anyone is using them, but they sit just nicely below my feed icons.

The Dreaded Adsense

I’ve been warned that Adsense is not going to make me much money and that it may even drive readers away. I understand that my core readers are mostly Adsense blind and less likely to click ads. So why am I adopting it?

I’m about to develop a site for someone else and I may do more freelance web development in future. I should at least try Adsense shouldn’t I? I’ll be trying other options too in future, but I’ll try not to go overboard.

Polls

I’ve adopted Lester Chan’s WP-Polls plugin. Polls are a great way to interact with your visitors, so I’ll be adding one every so often.

Alexa Widget

I’ve added an Alexa widget, now my ranking is semi-respectable. I know, I know, there are serious flaws with Alexa, but it’s one way to measure my progress. Let me add it damn it!

The Future

That’s all the changes for the moment. There will be more changes coming in future (rework my About page, separate comments and trackbacks, add a top commentator section, sort out my meta tags and a bunch of other stuff). I’ll leave all of that until after I get the DualFeeds 1.1 update out the door.

If you’ve read this far, you truly have stamina (or at least you’re not easily bored!).

Well, I can’t say I wasn’t warned about disabling NoFollow. I have just started to be hit by spam: one comment about every 5 minutes for the last 4 hours. That adds up quickly!

They only seem to be targeting one post: WordPress – Taming The Advanced Editor. Obviously there is a bot which has picked up this post and is hurling comments at it.

I’d originally been hoping to avoid using Askimet as long as possible, because it does catch the odd genuine comment. However, it has now been activated and is working well.

I’ve also activated the Math Comment Spam Protection plugin. Last time I tried it, it didn’t work properly – it was not showing the numbers you were supposed to add, so there was no way to add comments. This now seems to be resolved, although I’m not sure how. Maybe just deactivating it (last week) and reactivating it (today) fixed it.

Hopefully this combination will protect me, but it’s clear I’ve now really got spam. No thoughts of backing out though.

Of course, I may be unfair in blaming disabling nofollow, as it’s been disabled for several days with only a slight increase in spam. I joined MyBlogLog in the last 24 hours, so maybe it’s related to that. I guess there is no way of telling.

Anyway, welcome spam!